Panic is a sudden fear which dominates or replaces thinking and often affects groups of people or animals. Panics typically occur in disaster situations, or violent situations (such as robbery, home invasion, a shooting rampage, etc.) which may endanger the overall health of the affected group. The word panic derives from the Greek πανικός, "pertaining to Pan", the god of woods and fields who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots. Panic is also known as an acute case of anxiety.
As recently as 2002, the private ownership of gold was prohibited in China. You could be jailed if caught with any in your possession. Beginning in 2009, in a stunning about-face, the central government removed all restrictions. In fact, as Mineweb and other sources report now it’s actively pushing folks to buy some personal metal, with China's Central Television, the main state-owned television company, running news programs cum infomercials, letting the public know just how easy it is to purchase gold and silver as an investment.
It truly is as simple as can be, because every bank sells gold and silver bullion bars in four different sizes to individuals. (Try to find the same the next time you make the trek down to Wells Fargo.) Mining companies are reportedly encouraging employees to convert some of their wages to gold on payday. Gold is traded in some form 24 hours a day. And paper proxies for the metal are also soaring in popularity.
There are persistent rumors that the export of silver has already been banned. Gold could be next.
Thus China, which only yesterday was the lowest per-capita consumer of gold in the world, is bidding to become the biggest. Some analysts believe it will pass India – the top dog since forever – as early as 2010. Clearly, the government believes the country is strengthened if everyone who can holds some hard currency.
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GEORGE BUCKLEY, CHIEF UK ECONOMIST, DEUTSCHE BANK
"It is obviously another sticky number, inflation has surprised on the upside relative to expectations over the past few months. I think it is a combination of two things. Number one is sterling's impact on inflation and the fact is it has fallen very sharply from its peak in 2007 so that could have been putting upward pressure on import prices and core inflation."
"Secondly is the output gap. If it turns out that we have overestimated the trend rate of growth and the output gap might not actually be as weak as we thought it was ...inflationary pressures might be a little bit closer to the surface than we thought."
STEPHEN LEWIS, MONUMENT SECURITIES
"Obviously it is not as good as expected and there is no tendency for core CPI rate of inflation to moderate which must be worrying to the MPC because it casts doubt on their forecasts. Looking at the components this month, we seem to have more of a bounce back in furniture and household equipment after seasonal July sales than is usual."
Back in 1976, then Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan told his own party conference: "We used to think you could spend your way out of recession … I tell you now in all candour that option no longer exists … In so far as it ever existed, it worked only to inject larger doses of inflation into the economy, followed by higher unemployment as the next step".
The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.
This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.
"The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong."
"We hope there will be a change in monetary policy as soon as they have positive growth again," he said at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a policy gathering on Lake Como.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6146957/China-alarmed-by-US-money-printing.html
"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said.
China's reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world's largest.
"Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets," he added.
As of this weekend, the world is 250 billion dollars "richer". No products were produced. No taxes were raised. Not even one cent was borrowed. The IMF simply created a bookkeeping entry on behalf of those countries it felt worthy of receiving additional reserves. The reserves, SDRs, are a claim to "hard currency". The hard currency will be provided by those with "sufficiently strong external positions”, in other words, surplus nations.
There is no reason for surplus nations to part with hard currency, save two, that I can think of: Altruism or Power. And in my opinion they are having a go at the latter. My read on this is that the surplus nations have just made an end run around the United States and the US Congress who have veto power over IMF decisions. Surplus nations can now provide “voluntary trading arrangements” with non-surplus (importing) nations with the IMF as "broker". This sounds like a mechanism for the surplus nations to provide buying power to importing nations at the expense of us all.
The ability to inflate has now been augmented. It has transcended national boundaries from national central banks to a world central bank. This "new" bank now has the power to create money. Inflation is no longer limited to one currency but will affect all paper currencies in the world. We now have the prospect of a synchronized international inflation. It's not enough that citizens throughout the world had to keep a keen eye on their nations central bank, now we all need to keep an eye on the IMF.
The "IMF's Board Of Governors", a group never elected to office, unknown to most, and accountable to no one, has now gained the power to create new claims on production without legal limits or oversight from any regulatory body. All it need do is vote for more SDRs.
Given the "announcement in the dead of night" tactics just employed, I suggest we all sharpen our eyesight. This development doesn't change the inflation outlook for the next month or even for the next year. But make no mistake -- the "powers that be" just took the fiat system and the inflation threat to a new level.
Rothbard
Smart
Schiff
Hayek
Schumpeter Bastiat
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